A number of prior art systems exist for obtaining and reviewing general issued patent related information, including offerings by Google, Delphion, etc. None of these systems, however, allow for inspection or review of cases that are still pending (not yet issued) or in a post-issuance proceedings. The USPTO maintains a website which provides similar data, as well as databases containing information on still-pending cases through a system known as PAIR (patent application information retrieval). The PAIR system as currently constituted and presented, however, does not contain any accessible electronic database to permit the general public to perform conventional search, inspection operations for cases. For instance, in its current incarnation the user is required to know in advance and specify a specific case number (which may be difficult or impossible to locate) before they can see the data associated with such case, and even then the data is not organized in a fashion that makes it easy to review. As an example, the user cannot search any of the underlying communications by the Examiners or applicants to understand or follow what is transpiring in the application. Other than the use of specific case numbers, the user is not permitted to search or identify information of interest by subject matter, inventor, Examiner, or any other convenient parameter.
The PAIR system has been in existence for several years and yet has not been improved upon despite its obvious limitations. In fact the PTO has made every effort to make the information difficult to obtain through a variety of access limiting mechanisms, including using CAPTCHA codes and timeout mechanisms. A US government document dated Sep. 24, 2009 published by the Office of the Chief Information Officer titled “Public Meeting on Data Dissemination—Request for Information” confirms (see page 5) that the US PTO online search systems are designed for single queries, and are not designed for a large amount of traffic. In the RFI attached to this document the authors confirm that the PTO has no present solution to this problem, and they were actively seeking assistance from third parties to research the problem and provide a solution within the next 6 years. Moreover the authors confirm that the USPTO system is designed to prevent machine access to the PAIR data through a CAPTCHA system.
The general entry screens available through PAIR are shown in FIGS. 11A, 11B and 11C. As seen in FIG. 11A, the user must first traverse a security screen, which includes a well-known re-CAPTHCA test. After passing this test, the user is presented with a screen as seen in FIG. 11B, which only permits him/her to search cases by case number. As is apparent, this is extremely limiting as many persons do not know what these numbers are, and the PAIR system provides no insight or guidance on what the numbers might be. Nor does the PAIR system identify for the user the most recent submissions made so that the user has any idea of the range of input that might be relevant to identify the last N days of materials for example. Thus, there is no indication anywhere, of most recent cases/events issued by the PTO for ease of reference/convenience.
Finally, as seen in FIG. 11C the user is presented with the specific reexamination data in the form of multiple tabs. One tab allows the user to examine an image file wrapper of submissions (IFW) made by the submitter and/or issued by the PTO. Again, however, there is no general search capability at this point to allow the user to locate items of interest in the file, such as comments, text, etc., associated with this case (or other cases). While the tabs are reasonably well organized, one other significant problem with the PAIR site is that it is extremely difficult to navigate within a conventional browser, because many of the conventional function buttons do not operate in a consistent manner. For example while reviewing one screen, it is often impossible to simply go “back” one screen to look at another entry. Instead, the page load fails and the user is required to resubmit the query all over again. In addition, the system frequently times out and requires the user to re-log in all over again, which because of the recaptcha mechanism, is time consuming.
Consequently, persons skilled in the art have been actively deterred if not discouraged from accessing and compiling any of this USPTO data. In turn this means that a large amount of very useful data is kept effectively hidden from the general public, which is undesirable and does not advance the purpose of the patent laws. The problem is most acute in cases of reexaminations, which are a form of post-issuance patent challenge. Since reexamination cases are frequently associated with ongoing litigation, the financial stakes are often high and the public interest factor much larger. Yet as with un-issued cases the public is stuck using the very limited PAIR system for obtaining information about ongoing cases. Other examples of organizational processes which do not lend themselves to public inspection and review are well-known, including for example the status of ongoing immigration applications.
Because the data is effectively inaccessible, it is difficult to predict basic information about cases, such as how long they will last, what strategies work or do not work, etc. The public, again, is left with mostly indirect guesswork and gross average statistics published by the PTO itself.
Clearly, there is a need for systems and methods to improve the limitations in the current PAIR (and similar) systems and existing approaches might attempt to do so, but are not sufficient. This need is increasing as Congress has only recently enacted even more post and pre-grant challenge mechanisms for patents and applications in the America Invents Act (AIA) (which provisions are incorporated by reference herein). The challenge proceedings in the AIA are to be implemented by 35 U.S.C. §321 or inter partes review under 35 U.S.C. §311 and in accordance with a new set of PTO rules which are provided at Federal Register/Vol. 77, No. 3/p. 442 and p. 448—Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012 which is also incorporated by reference herein. The rules for reexaminations have also been changed, which means that it will take several years for practitioners to begin to understand the new interpretations, standards and rulings by the PTO based on the new statutes and regulations. Thus, to fully avail themselves of these new procedures, the public requires a data discovery, review and presentation tool which provides greater transparency and oversight of USPTO (and similar governmental agency) proceedings.
Public sector information such as PAIR offers a veritable untapped resource of inestimable value (BBC News—Data storm: Making government data pay 15 Dec. 2011: Michael Cross). Despite the availability of public databases (e.g., USPTO PAIR, SEC EDGAR, et. al.) the organization of these data combined with the user access makes finding meaningful relationships all but impossible. The plethora of available search engines (Google, Yahoo, Delphion, Dialog, et. al.) has not improved this situation: access to Public Sector Information is inadequate as evidenced by reports that this information is being under utilized resulting in missed opportunity.
In addition to patents, public sector information can range from data sets about the weather and the natural environment to great works of historic art. At issue is a foundational philosophy that restricts user access to a constrained search strategy—if one knows what they are looking for, they can find it. But it is extremely difficult for a researcher to find relationships between information that are not already scripted by a database schema employed in the data storage system.